Dedication Day - NBC-Washington - May 22, 1958 (Color Videotape)

Dedication of NBC's new Washington, D.C. Facilities, housing NBC network and WRC-TV television studios on May 22, 1958. The program represents the earliest known color recording discovered to date. Recorded on 2" Quadruplex Videotape by Ampex VR-1000 series recorders.

The program starts in black and white, showing President Eisenhower arriving outside the WRC studios. Later inside, Robert Sarnoff, president of NBC, pushes a button signifying the inauguration of the WRCA new color studios. As he pushed the button, the color encoder switches from a mono picture to color.

Reviews

Reviewer:cathyftr -
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October 7, 2010 Subject:
Back to a time when TV stations had actually spent money...

I have seen this clip on other sites in the past, glad its here !!!

Kinda sad to watch actually since back in the day and up into the 80s..good money ( a lot of it ) was spent on building and keeping up to date when it came to local radio and TV. Today money of course remains to be "king" but the rule is to do MORE with LESS. One reason why a good many of todays young reporters and anchors, the quality leaves a lot to be desired. Back in the "good ole days" when Cronkite and Huntley & Brinkley were doing the news, quality and trust were important.

Today..that has been replaced with how sexy one looks on TV and how many friends they have on Facebook while chances are they are paid less than employees at the local Burger King.

It's too bad this isn't encoded at the same standard as other FedFlix entries. It's 480 X 360, with extreme compression artifacts. It would have been nice to see this as a straight NTSC interlaced encode at 720 X 480 or even 756 X 486.

Reviewer:jazzfan -
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October 4, 2010 Subject:
Ask Not, What Your Country Can Do For You, But What Would You Do With Your Tax Cut!

Mstamper’s review was right on target. I just want to add a few things. He mentions the age of cynicism that we are in. I agree. I don’t/can’t watch television and I’m glad that the stations “went off the air” last year. I am not going to pay to watch crap because I live in a fringe area. The corporate stranglehold of the media has squashed democracy in the United States. It’s too bad the radio stations didn’t go off the air too. I took the antenna off my car and listen to my mp3 player. By the way, when President Eisenhower left office there was a surplus and he warned about the rise of the military-industrial complex.

Reviewer:mstamper -
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October 2, 2010 Subject:
What a great country we used to be

It is easy to forget that there was a time when the US led the world in technical excellence and manufacturing skill. We were justifiably proud of our achievements. The dedication of a facility like this was attended with dignity and respect. I've seen similar films of other TV station dedications from the 1950s and early 1960s. New TV stations were an important addition to the quality of life in many communities. We were thrilled when a new channel went on the air. Now, in this age of cynicism and decline, we have precious little to be proud of. Almost everything we consume is made by foreigners. We are detached from the process of designing and manufacturing. Our domestic industry has been decimated. We are a hollowed out shell compared to the America profiled in this video.